It's not every day a Baltimore mayoral candidate gets a sit-down meeting with the president of the United States.
DeRay Mckesson, the prominent activist and last-minute entrant into Baltimore's mayoral race, met Thursday with President Barack Obama and different generations of civil rights leaders at the White House for a Black History Month event.
Mckesson, who is among 13 Democrats running for mayor, said the president engaged in a wide-ranging conversation with the activists.
"We had a really strong conversation," Mckesson said. "We covered so many topics from policing contracts to use-of-force policies to Flint and the school-to-prison pipeline to the upcoming Supreme Court nomination."
The Black Lives Matter activist who grew up in West Baltimore said he also discussed the ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the Baltimore Police Department with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who attended the meeting.
A White House official described the meeting as a first-of-its-kind gathering of leaders who represent different generations of the civil rights movement, and said the president called for the meeting to focus on criminal justice reform and building trust between police and neighborhoods.
Mckesson, who lives in North Baltimore, gained widespread attention during protests after the police-involved shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. He unexpectedly jumped into the race for Baltimore's mayor earlier this month.
